


Binary

by CharacteristicallyMinor



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacteristicallyMinor/pseuds/CharacteristicallyMinor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chowder's an all or nothing kind of guy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Binary

The thing about Chowder is that he thinks in absolutes. He knows that nuance is actually kind of important, but he’s never really mastered the knack of it. He’s an all or nothing kind of guy.

He likes programming for the same reason that he’s a goalie. When you write a program, you know whether it works or not. It’s not like English class, where you can edit your essay forever and still have no clue whether it’s good or not. If the program works, it’ll produce the expected output; if it doesn’t, there’ll be errors when he tries to compile it, or else there it’ll throw an exception, or else the output will look wrong. Sure, maybe one of his methods will be more complicated than it needs to be or something. But basically, it either works or it doesn’t, and it’s easy to tell the difference. 

Being a goalie is like that. He either stops the other team from making a goal or he doesn’t. He thinks that being any other position would drive him nuts. There’s too much nuance; too many places where the game could have gone slightly different. He thinks that he doesn’t want to have to obsess over all of those. Instead, he rejoices over the goals he blocks and scolds himself for the goals he fails to prevent. 

He loves Caitlin the way he loves the Sharks the way he loves Samwell the way he loves hockey the way he loves it when his code executes perfectly the first time. He thinks maybe he shouldn’t love her that way, that maybe people aren’t meant to be loved that way, but he can’t really do anything else. It’s just how he is. He should maybe worry about it more than he does, but there’s really no point. He can’t change it. He calls her pet names and shares sweets with her and falls more and more in love every time she talks to him. 

Chowder knows this might cause him to crash and burn someday. But some weeks, when his code executes perfectly on the first try and he stops the opposing team from scoring at all and Caitlin smiles at him like he’s the best thing in the world, Chowder thinks he’ll accept any consequences if it means he gets to temporarily feel this swawesome.


End file.
